With all the buzz around the return of Mad Men, which endured a year and a half hiatus
between seasons, the premiere was a big hit on social media. Unfortunately, Don Draper could not have even conceived of how we leveraged participatory media as we watched him in action. This thought led me to wonder, if Draper could use Social Media, how would he go about it?
For the purpose of this post, we will stick to how he would employ social networks for his clients, not his personal life, although that would be a fun post to do :). We will speak generally to which sites he might employ and how he would leverage them, starting from the least complimentary social network to the most.
4. Linkedin – I was going to say something funny here, but hold on… Mohawk Airlines, a Don favored client in the past and a possible engagement in Season 5, could cater to executives and frequent fliers looking for an alternative to American Airlines. It would make sense that some Mohawk Airlines fliers were business professionals that used Linkedin to connect with other professionals. Remember, executives from all Fortune 500 companies are represented in this network. Creating a company page and consulting Mohawk sales reps to connect and engage in.
3. Twitter – Don thrived on coming up with slogans except, slogans alone would not be sustainable on this platform. Don and his team would have to adapt from the norm of just broadcasting a message that has mass appeal to having one on one conversations. With all the mistakes big brands have made on this still fairly new platform(a la the recent McDonalds hashtag that went awry), Don’s clients could use some direction on how to best utilize a network like twitter.None of the brands to my knowledge had the appeal and cultural acceptance that a Starbucks has, so Don and his team would have to think about how to drum up conversations on twitter for brands/clients that don’t have that sex appeal.conversations on Linkedin with their potential audience would make a lot of sense for this client. This same strategy could also be employed with one of Don’s other favorite past clients, the Hilton Hotels, to target the business professionals they accommodated. Outside of those two clients, Linkedin would not be a high priority as most of Don’s pitches/clients were consumer facing.
2. Facebook – This would be a dream for Don, especially with the introduction of Timeline for brand pages. Most, if not all of his pitches relied heavily on the emotion that the advertisement drew from its potential viewers. Through a visual, a commercial, a short message up on an easel, Don executed on telling a story around the concept. This sounds exactly like what Timeline is intending to be for audiences of brands: the story of a brand through photos, videos, short updates that are formatted in a way that invites you to engage and discover the brand in a new way. However, there could be some challenges with past clients like Lucky Strike, who most likely would have a reputation management issue on their hands. The new direct message option for Timeline pages would help, but Don and his team would need to consider how to handle or consult on any negative backlash that they would receive using this medium.
1. Pinterest – This by far would be the easiest a fit for Don and his team to launch, execute on, and utilize. All the concepts messaged into images, videos, even text on images are a natural fit for Pinterest. And if you didn’t think a concept like the “flying beans” in the season premiere of Season 5 might fly in a real campaign, why not test it on Pinterest? A concept could easily be tested by introducing it via a power user and measuring it by number of likes, pins, comments, etc. If Don Draper truly embraced social, he might gravitate to a network like Pinterest the most.
Did not make the list but worthy of mentioning…..Social TV, really more of a marketing niche that combines platforms like Twitter and GetGlue. With all the opportunities that advertisements have to tiein with the “television department”, Don would have an affinity to social TV analytics. Although Social TV is still in its infancy stage, check-ins on services like Get Glue and live tweeting during shows might provide insights into the audience watching the show and its commercials. Are there trends, sentiment, chatter that can be incorporated into future concept and messaging? Most importantly, is there any positive activity around the commercials that ran during the segments? This would hypothetically be easier to measure in a world that did not include time shifting capabilities like DVR, Netflix, Hulu, etc.
Of course there are a lot of variables to consider, and would be a interesting to simply take what we know about social media and drop it into the 60’s Mad Men culture. Each specific client might utilize one network more than another. How do you think Don Draper would use Social Media? Do you agree or disagree with my thoughts?
